Dr. Tabatha Barber explains how hormonal shifts in your 40s trigger fight-or-flight responses in the amygdala, similar to teenage mood swings. Compassion toward yourself and others can calm that response and shift you toward clearer thinking.
I can approach this from a professional lens and give you some professional answers, or from a personal lens and go, oh my gosh, me too. This is really an interesting season of life. For me, I'm in my early 40s, and this is kind of my— I feel almost like I'm back in those teenage years of unpredictability, hormones everywhere. So the first thing I would say is compassion. Compassion is an incredibly powerful tool. So I would say, and I'm gonna try and extend this to myself as well, In this season of life, compassion is key. Compassion can get you out of the threat center of your brain, which we can often inhabit a lot when we're managing hormones. We're in fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. All of those threat responses feel very strong. Compassion can help kind of soothe the threat center of the brain, the amygdala, and get you in the prefrontal cortex, which is where you make grounded, good, logical decisions.
